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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26438734">the fair folk</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Huinari/pseuds/Huinari'>Huinari</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Don't copy to another site, Fairies Are Scary, Gen, Kind of dark, Originally Posted on FanFiction.Net, fairy-type centric, loose interpretation of fairy folklore with pokemon, original human characters are here to die or suffer most of the time</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 04:54:19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>10,194</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26438734</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Huinari/pseuds/Huinari</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>they are beautiful, they are enchanting and they are ethereal, but remember - fairies are not kind.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>14</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. gardevoir, azumarill, mawile, sylveon</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p>
  <em>changeling</em>
</p><p> </p><p>The gardevoir loves Master, she really does, but if there is something or someone she loves more, it is the babe. The son has such soft cheeks and a beautiful smile, with eyes that will rival the sky in their clear blue and break more than a fair share of hearts.</p><p>The world is a cruel place, and they will eventually break him, break his heart and his beautiful, innocent smile and his fantastically blue eyes. They will rob him of his innocence, rape him with the cruel weapons of reality until he is forever lost to that soft glow of infant innocence.</p><p>Master does not realize the tragedy this will be. He has plans for his son, plans to surround him with strict tutors that will beat politics into his head at young ages before sending him into prestigious schools where he will be taught the value of cold money, and then have him take over the empire of lies and blood as an adult.</p><p>Master does not see the tragedy, and she will not let such a travesty happen.</p><p>She picks him up, wrapping loving arms around him, and then pulls with her mind to leave the walls of the house. She lays him in the cradle of nature, lined with flowers brought from flabébé herds and scented with aromatisse feathers. She leans in, kisses the babe's forehead and blesses him.</p><p>But she cannot simply take. To simply take would be robbery, and she is no thief.</p><p>She must give something in exchange.</p><p>From a different cradle she picks up a ralts, with red eyes and bloodless skin. Holding the fairy babe to her heart, she teleports back to the mansion and drifts into the baby room. She places the ralts into the crib the human baby used to occupy, and wraps the blankets still impregnated with the soft baby smell around the ralts. "Perhaps you'll sweeten him up," she suggests, and the baby ralts lets out a baby-like cry closer to that of a human's.</p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>
  <em>kelpie</em>
</p><p> </p><p>"Be careful of the deeper part of the lake," his mother warns him as she unpacks the sausages onto the barbeque grill, but Jamie isn't quite listening to her cautious words. He sees the lake's water, seemingly never-ending, so blue and so cool to his heated eyes. He pokes a toe in, shivers in delight at the chilled temperature, and dives in recklessly as only a child could.</p><p>The water's cold is a shock to his body, but soon he is used to it, and then the water is pleasant. He swims, kicking and wading in a manner similar to a four-legged animal rather than a boy who has taken expensive swimming lessons.</p><p>Something bumps against his leg and he yelps as blue bumps come up next to his head. He relaxes at the sight of a cute face and a friendly smile. His grin widens when he realizes what this Pokémon is. "You're an azumarill!" he exclaims.</p><p>The water rabbit chirps happily, and splashes him lightly with its round-ended tail. Jamie laughs and they have fun, splashing each other with harmless water.</p><p>He becomes so engrossed in the splashing game and chasing the water sprite to retaliate he doesn't realize that his legs haven't touched the bottom of the lake until he has been kicking at the water to stay afloat for a good minute. "I should head back," he says.</p><p>The azumarill's ears droop, and Jamie feels bad. The pokémon just wants to have fun. "We could play closer to shore," he suggests.</p><p>The water type does better, and offers him the use of its floating tail. Holding onto the round orb, Jamie finds it easier to float. "Hey, thanks," he says as they drift. He doesn't see the shore getting farther and farther, his mother's figure growing to the size of a toothpick, and then a thumbnail. This is fun, the water like cool silk sliding around his body. The world is quiet here.</p><p>The azumarill smiles at him, and then the round tail is pulled away from his loose fingers. Jamie sputters at the loss of his flotation support, screams and flails, but something below pulls him under and then his lungs fill up oh-so-quickly with the lake's water, tasting of silt and dirt and fish and slime. Suddenly the water is not so harmless, and suddenly Jamie feels cold.</p><p>Something cold and strong grips around his neck, and he sees the azumarill's head rise into his line of vision, eclipsing the sunlight filtered by the lake water completely. The arms grip with more power than would ever be associated with such spindly looking blue arms, and Jamie blacks out.</p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>
  <em>futakuchi-onna</em>
</p><p> </p><p>The cave's walls are lined with glittering stones. Worthless quartz of poor quality, but the penumbrae of the cave hides the imperfections, and the shadows embellish until the cave is half-lit with jewels of priceless value, all the hues of the Great Stag's antlers present and set in the dull stone walls.</p><p>A man wanders through the cave, searching for a particular jewel that can bring out mystical powers of pokémon in the hopes of becoming rich. The cave is known to house many mysterious spirits, whose presence illuminates the moss growing in its winding fairy paths.</p><p>Whispers of leather wings on the ceilings, of bone helmets shining white in the dim shadowed corners remind him that there are powerful creatures present, watching his struggling search for a stone. His own pokémon, a pangoro with a burly face, keeps away the rock types with the threat of a viciously swung fist while he searches.</p><p>After hours of wandering the networks of shimmering crystals, his tired eyes finally find their quarry in the midst of what looks like an empty nest. It's an orb, like all the papers exclaiming over mega evolution's wonder states, and it has a shine within it that might come not from its surroundings, but within.</p><p>He doesn't much care to wax out poetry for the beauty of a rock. All he cares is just how much money it will make him.</p><p>Just as he is about to pocket the rock, he hears a yell from behind. He spins around, but his pangoro was left watching guard from behind the corner, and it sounds like something got the jump on the tough dark and fighting type rather than the other way around.</p><p>He approaches the bend in the shining crystal walls of the cave, and turns it to find his pangoro lying on the ground, knocked unconscious or killed.</p><p>Instantly he tenses. Anything that can knock out a pangoro can certainly take on a human, especially a defenceless one.</p><p>When something brushes against his leg he nearly screams as he jumps and looks down.</p><p>There is a small creature, and he sighs in relief that it is not an onix or rhyhorn, both notoriously territorial. It looks like a little girl, almost, with a petite body and pretty face. Like a child, it points at the orb still in his hands and tips its head to the side, ever so slightly. It is a fairy, but its name he doesn't remember.</p><p>And of course the fairy would look to the special stone in his hand. Fairies are attracted to beauty much like insects are attracted to the sweetness of honey.</p><p>"I'll just take this, if you don't mind," he says, holding up the orb that shines so in his hands. The stone is warm to his palm, and he would swear upon his mother's grave that the stone is the provider of the heat to his hand rather than the other way around.</p><p>The child-creature – mawile, he remembers somewhere in the depths of his mind – tilts its head, this time to the other side.</p><p>"Thank you," he says, and stands up. Mawile, he is pretty sure, are just fairies. As far as he knows there is nothing too harmful about them, and the innocent appearance the little creature sports only reinforces his beliefs.</p><p>Except something knocked out his pangoro, a tall, bulky creature who can take hits and retaliate with crushing fists. Something defeated the fighter at its own game.</p><p>He doesn't remember this until the mawile turns around, and he is met with the last sight of his life – a great, big, gaping jaw of steel fangs lined with sweet-smelling drool like how the walls of the cave are lined with glittering stones.</p><p>He screams, much like his pangoro did earlier on when the fairy roughhoused him in the callous way of the Fair Folk until the great fighter was battered to death. The sound is cut off abruptly in the cave, replaced by sickening crunches and tearing noises as the small, deceitful fairy feeds. None of the other spirits come to invest, and the quartz glitters.</p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>
  <em>púca</em>
</p><p> </p><p>"Don't pull on the ribbons," the mother says absentmindedly, repeating what her mother told her back in the days when she was a young girl who was endlessly fascinated with the satin-smooth, cream-pink ribbons that would flutter in the wind like the sash of a princess.</p><p>The girl ignores her, of course, but she's busy pinning up laundry and the stories of blank, blue eyed creatures that can fell dragons are just stories. The sylveon is just an eeveelution, a pretty pink one at that. He's harmless, but they're rare, coveted and make great pets.</p><p>Her daughter roughly strokes the feelers again. The sylveon struggles to get out of the small human's grip without clawing and breaking the child's skin because he is a trained pokémon and he understands that sometimes young humans will be stupid and annoying, but even he can only take so much. He was once wild, once running amongst petals kissed by fairies before a trainer caught and changed him into a fairy himself before selling him into domestic life.</p><p>He was never born as a fey but he has become one, and the spirits do not appreciate those who touch them unnecessarily. A handful of times are accidents – anymore and it is an insult.</p><p>When the girl screams the mother drops the clothing she tries to pin onto the line. It is a white button-up shirt, the kind that stains too easily and irritates her to dry, but she does not care, not when her daughter howls so painfully, making sounds no child should ever make.</p><p>She runs to where she left her child, and finds her daughter with two hands clutched tight around her eyes as she lets loose guttural sounds of pain. When she finally pries the fingers and palms away, she recoils from the sight of eyes dazzled by fairy lights into blindness, staring unseeingly in the direction of another pair of sightless eyes of a cruel baby blue.</p>
<hr/><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. mr. mime, florges</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p>
  <em>brownie</em>
</p><p> </p><p>The room at the farthest corner of the house is not to be visited. The child grows up with the sight of the closed door being her only image associated with the room.</p><p>"That's the room for Mr. Mime," her parents tell her. Mr. Mime is a friend to the family, who helps with their chores and protects them. He comes out at night, they tell her.</p><p>But she is to never enter the room.</p><p>She grows up leaving plates of milk in front of the room at night, and finding it empty in the morning. She grows up getting used to floors swept clean by invisible hands, dust banished by unseen fingers. She lives with the presence of another being without ever seeing the creature.</p><p>One time she tries to speak to it. "Mr. Mime?" softly calls into the room through the crack in the doorknob where the key would go in. "Mr. Mime? Are you there?"</p><p>But the only reply she receives is silence.</p><p>One day she is too curious to bear it any longer. Shyly, when her parents are out, she reaches for the forbidden doorknob and twists it open. The creak of the hinges makes her hesitate, but then, resolve hardened at the reminder that this may be her only opportunity, she pushes it open fully.</p><p>She sees a man-like figure sitting in the corner on a stool, facing the walls. "Mr. Mime?"</p><p>Slowly, the humanoid figure turns around. She is greeted with a face almost ridiculously painted, like a clown.</p><p>"Hi," she says shyly, and waves a hand.</p><p>The painted face stretches in a smile, and Mr. Mime waves back.</p><p>"It's nice to meet you," she says, emboldened by his apparent friendliness, and it becomes easier to talk after that. She tells the fairy in the corner about her life, what she's learned at school, what her favourite snacks and colours are and he listens like no one ever did. He makes her feel special as she speaks, and when she doesn't have much to say he makes gestures to bring giggles out of her.</p><p>When she thinks her parents will come home soon, she realizes that she should leave him. She waves, and when he waves back silently pulls the door closed before running up to her room, smiling widely the entire time even as she buries her face in her pillows.</p><p>From then on she has a secret, and it feels wonderful to know something others do not, like holding a precious stone close to her heart where no one can see. When her parents leave her alone in the house she sneaks to the brownie room, where he always waits, sitting on his stool. She talks about anything and everything, and he listens so seriously that she feels her heart swell at the attention. When she wants to see his stories he obliges, and through hand motions tell his own stories that she interprets out loud.</p><p>He, she decides, is her best friend.</p><p>One day, she decides to thank him for cleaning and listening and miming. They already give him food, milk in a saucer, biscuits, small portions of the meals, but she wants to give him something even more special.</p><p>She paws through her belongings, searching for something good enough to give that she is willing to part with. She cannot give him her dolls, because she loves them too much, but maybe she could give him something like pretty wrapping paper, or a ribbon from a holiday candy.</p><p>When she finally decides on the gift, she places it in her pocket and waits for her parents to leave the house before she skips down the hallway to his room.</p><p>As usual, he is there with a friendly smile. She smiles in return, and chatters away about her life in dreams where she is a fairy princess who has magic powers. She tells him the stories of her adventures as a powerful pink princess, and he smiles in return without a single word.</p><p>Then she has to leave in case her parents return. She expresses to him her deepest regrets in the most royal manner she can manage because she feels the remnants of her story cloaking her, illusions remaining after the tale she has spun.</p><p>"But here," she says, reaching into her pocket and pulling out her second favourite hair ribbon. Her pink one is the prettiest, but she likes that one too much. She chooses to give him the red one instead. "For you."</p><p>He leaves his stool to shuffle up to the door on his oddly bent legs and pointed feet, and reaches out with spindly fingers and takes the ribbon from her own fingers. His usual smile stretches even further in happiness at the gift.</p><p>This was a good idea.</p><p>She smiles back and begins to close the door, but a hand slams into its edge.</p><p>She freezes. "Mr. Mime?" she asks, suddenly not quite sure if this was a good idea. The clown's face is no longer quite nice, but rather scary. His eyes are bigger, brighter, and he is breathing harder.</p><p>His eyes look to her, and they almost appear insane. He leans in, and he is no longer smiling but rather <em>leering</em> at her.</p><p><em>Thank you, my dear</em>, he says but his mouth doesn't move as she hears the words.</p><p>Then his spindly fingers grip her wrist like an iron clamp and drag her out of the room, out of the house. She struggles, pulling and trying to dig her heels into the floor, but he is too strong, and it is as if her efforts don't even inconvenience him.</p><p>As he passes through he waves his other hand, and the house responds chaotically. Pictures fall off walls and let out shattering noises as glass breaks. Pots jump off the stove and shelves to clang loudly, while the table upturns and the chairs break into pieces.</p><p>She screams and cries, begging him to stop and let her go, but he only laughs out loud without opening his mouth. He reaches the door, opens it, and exits with a swagger in his steps.</p><p><em>Free at last!</em> His eyes dart to her, and all she, not a princess who can slay dragons and meet hundreds of handsome, charming princes but a girl of eight winters can do is cry.</p><p>He pulls her into a dance with a flourish of his hands, and they leave the house forever.</p><hr/><p> </p><p>
  <em>dryad</em>
</p><p> </p><p>"I can't say I like this garden's layout very much," the new lady of the house complains as she walks through the lilies with white velvet petals swaying softly. "I'd prefer rose bushes here, to be grown into a – a maze, maybe. Wouldn't that be lovely?"</p><p>The housekeeper looks uneasy at her words. The lady sighs. "What is it?" she says, irritated.</p><p>"Milady, this garden belongs to a florges," the woman says, voice hesitant and words slow. "It's the flower woman's domain."</p><p>"A what?" the lady says, too irritated to be actually curious. Her new husband, while rich and powerful in Kalos, seems to have a staff ruled by superstition and myths. This would never have been permitted back in her family's lands, in the dragon-ruled Johto where people were no-nonsense and knew their places.</p><p>But no. From the moment she has been in this airy land, the people and their superstition of 'carry bread' and 'hold iron close' and 'don't offend the spirits' have been driving her utterly insane.</p><p>"Florges," the woman says, and there's a touch of reverence in her voice as if she speaks a god's name. "They say the flower women won't allow changes made to their gardens without their consent or blessings, and that they'll have their revenge on those foolish enough to-"</p><p>She has had enough of this. "<em>Foolish</em>?!" she demands. "Foolish, am I, to want to change the garden to be more fashionable? Foolish, because I can do what I want and not follow some <em>fairy</em>?"</p><p>The housekeeper bows her head, but does not say anything. Huffing, the lady returns to the house, suddenly in need of something sweet to lighten her mood and carry her through what will no doubt be the ordeal of her life.</p><p>That night she goes to bed, alone. Her lord husband is away on business for the king, and she must manage the house in his stead. She tells herself that she will do a good job, that she will rule the home with an iron fist that will crush out any silly sentiments and superstitions. Kalos may be fashionable, but in the backwaters there are far too many old wives' tales for her comfort. Nothing good about keeping them around. The sooner the country folk embrace modern science and stop believing in unfounded myths, the better.</p><p>She leaves the windows open. Her room is on the second floor, and the grounds are guarded well. It is too hot of a night to bear without a breeze cooling her down.</p><p>The lady begins to drift off into sleep, lulled by the words of her favourite romance novel, when the breeze turns sweet with the scent of flowers. Sleepily, she turns to her side and finds a figure standing over her.</p><p>"Hurgh!" She bolts upright, scared and surprised. She opens her mouth to scream when the figure reaches out with a finger and places it on her lips. She tries to scream at the touch of skin that bears no warmth of life in it, but much to her horror finds that her throat has betrayed her and ceased to work at the touch of the cold, dead finger.</p><p>The figure – a feminine creature with a slim body and a headdress of sweet-smelling blossoms perched on an unnaturally pale head – frowns down at the lady regally, much like a dissatisfied queen would. It bends its head closer to hers, eyes glowing imperiously, and that is the last sight the lady's eyes ever see.</p><p>The next day a maid enters the room to wake the mistress of the house, only to find her dead in her luxurious bed, face purple and throat wrapped with thick vines.</p><p>
  <em>.</em>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. clefable, jigglypuff, wigglytuff</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p>
  <em>banshee</em>
</p><p> </p><p>"Mt. Moon, huh?" the hiker asks the employee of the small convenience store at the foot of Kanto's famous mountain. She's a pretty thing, with brown hair curled and impish blue eyes under thick lashes. The first button of her shirt is open, and the skin of her smooth, long neck is cream coloured.</p><p>She smiles back, flirtingly. "Mt. Moon," she says agreeably, handing him his purchases and brushing her thin fingers against the back of his hands lightly. He grins at the interested, beckoning look in her baby blues. "It's a good day to hike through it."</p><p>He might say more, but a wheeze behind him stops whatever words that were about to come out. "Ha! A good day?"</p><p>The pretty girl's face turns sour, and he turns to see a hag. "A good day, she says," the old woman grumbles. "When the banshees have been howling and death 'bout to come any minute!"</p><p>"Oh, grandma," the girl says, embarrassment clear and pink on her cheekbones. She walks around the counter and takes her relative by her arm gently while giving him a good look at her curvy, supple body. Modestly sheathed in a button-up shirt and knee length skirt, but the clothes cling to her figure and his imagination can fill in the rest. "They're just clefairy singing or the local kids making some trouble. Nothing harmful about that."</p><p>The old woman, however, is not one to be deterred. She raises one knobbly finger in his face, and he nearly goes cross-eyed.</p><p>"If yer not a fool, boy," she says, and spits slightly. "Y'ell stay away from the mountains today. When clefable cry you hide."</p><p>The girl pushes her to the back of the store. "Sorry," she says, shame making her eyes downcast. Flirting is over, it seems.</p><p>"No problem," he says, ending it amicably and allowing future flirtations in case he decides to return to the area. He leaves the store, armed with more water and snacks in his backpack. He looks at the great Mt. Moon ahead of him, smiles, and begins to walk. His plan is to start at the east of Mt. Moon, go through a few of its famous tunnels, stay for a few hours or a night on the summit, depending on how fast he can manage to get there, and then exit through the west before heading to Pewter. It should take four or five days, six at the most. Hopefully he'll catch sight of an elusive clefairy.</p><p>He climbs for a few hours, clinging to rocks and admiring the view since there isn't much foliage. Occasionally the rocks he walks on turn out to be geodude, but his weepinbell takes care of those easily with a quick mega drain.</p><p>He nearly reaches the entrance to the famous caves when he sees it, a pink creature. For a minute he thinks it's a clefairy, and reaches for a camera in excitement. The creatures are rare, and Mt. Moon is famous for the little fairies shaped like pink stars.</p><p>He raises the camera, and the fairy turns to him. The shape is wrong, he realizes even as he takes a picture and captures its image. Not quite a star – too long at its center.</p><p>It's a clefable.</p><p>The old woman's warning makes him flinch, but he shakes off the nervous feeling. It's just folktales that say the evolved forms of clefairy lose their playfulness and turn their eyes to signs of death. Their cries don't bring or forewarn of death, and their shadows don't turn into devils that suck the soul out of a fellow's body. They're not even psychic, for Birds' sakes.</p><p>He nods at the clefable and is about to walk towards the cave's entrance – he sees it now – when the clefable opens its mouth and screams. Tears run down its dull, almost broken eyes, and its mouth is open to unleash a wail that makes his heart speed up in fear. He almost quakes from terror as it continues to cry in an unholy way, staring at him as it claps its small hands together.</p><p>He soon quakes for real when out of the mountains comes a rush of graveller, rolling and bouncing and running. Cursing, he tries to reach shelter, but there is none. Nothing between him and the herd of graveller, and only a steep hill behind him.</p><p>He turns and tries to run for it anyways. If he rushes, maybe he can stay ahead. Graveller are walking boulders, and they're not known for their speed. If he can make it ahead, and reach the stream that runs at the base of the mountain, he can reach safety.</p><p>He begins running down, and his entire body is filled with adrenaline urging him to <em>run run run</em> because behind him there is danger, there is death. He steps on a rock, and then is flung off as the irritated geodude twists its body. He falls to the ground, ankle throbbing in the pain of a sprain, and then tries to scramble out of the way of the rolling graveller herd.</p><p>He doesn't make it, and his screams are abruptly cut off as the living boulders roll over him. The screams are replaced with snaps of breaking bones and crunches of equipment in his backpack. Then, there remains very little to be broken, and soon the last graveller rolls away.</p><p>The clefable looks down, still crying, and then it wanders back into Mt. Moon where it will wait for the next death it must forewarn.</p><hr/><p> </p><p>
  <em>siren</em>
</p><p> </p><p>Route 115 is a route with history. The ancient Draconids at Meteor Falls once broke through the wild with their fierce dragons and cleared the path so they could travel to other parts of Hoenn.</p><p>Now, a Draconid woman with olive skin and black hair warns him. "You should seal your ears," she warns him, voice slightly warmed by an accent. In her hand she holds the white feathers of swablu towards him.</p><p>He frowns. "I'm good," he says politely. He has no patience for old folklores and wives' tales.</p><p>She still continues to hold out the fluff at him, shaking her fistful of the white stuff when he doesn't take it. Just to appease her, he takes it and half-heartedly places it in his ears.</p><p>The Draconid woman huffs. "I hope the gods will watch over you," she says, and lets him leave.</p><p>"Freaks," he mutters. The Draconids are dying out, and in his opinion, not at a fast enough rate.</p><p>He leaves the caves where the waters flecked with starlight falls and walks by the beach, enjoying the fresh breath of air tinged with salt. A jigglypuff comes bouncing his way, curiosity having driven it out from the grass it hid in. He smiles at the round, pink creature, who blinks up with innocent eyes at him.</p><p>The jigglypuff smiles back, and then opens its mouth to begin a song. There are no words, no clever rhymes or romantic ballads, just sounds resembling a human's wordless cries, but the meaningless sounds are so melodious, so beautiful that it moves him in a part of his heart that makes his entire body stop to listen.</p><p>His eyes grow heavy as he stands, just as the rest of his body seems to droop. Surely, just stopping to take a small break wouldn't be so bad? The sea's waves crashing onto the beach is a rhythm that his heart echoes, and the melodies waxed by the small fairy soothe him so. It's a lullaby from his childhood days, when his mother would hold him near and whisper songs to lull him to sleep.</p><p>Eyes half closed, he lies down on the sand warmed by the sun. Just for a moment, he could take a break.</p><p>Through the crack open in his eyes he watches the jigglypuff approach him, still singing its song. When he doesn't move, it wiggles in satisfaction before waving at something out of sight.</p><p>Still lying unmoving, he watches another pink creature approach, this one bigger than the jigglypuff. It has a more oval body, with longer ears and a white stomach.</p><p>A wigglytuff.</p><p>The jigglypuff sings as the wigglytuff approaches. The larger pink fairy sniffs him carefully, and nods in some sort of approval. It opens its mouth, and the insides of the pink, harmless-looking fairy have teeth long and sharp like knives.</p><p>There is something wrong about this scenery, but it's like a dream. He can't move, can't panic at this as the wigglytuff comes closer, mouth still sharp like the cavern of death from the darkest of his nightmares. The song washes over him and dulls him to the world.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. whimsicott</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p>
<p>
  <em>saci</em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>As he walks into the black, sleek vehicle stretching and demonstrating his wealth, the CEO tugs at the tie around his neck, freeing his neck from the chokehold the knot has on him. Stupid thing chaffed him during the entire meeting, and had its conclusion been anything less than what it was, he would have probably gone home and beaten his wife for tying it too tight in the morning. Woman can't do anything right.</p>
<p>But he's happy enough that he'll probably go easy on her tonight. The company's finally purchased the rights to clear part of Pinwheel Forest to build the condominium, and nothing can bring down his mood today.</p>
<p>The chauffeur drives the limo up to his apartment's grand entrance, and bows deeply without a word as he gets out. He allows for the doorman to clear the way for him as he walks through the lobby to reach the elevator, and hums along with the soft music as the lift smoothly moves up, making him feel like he is flying. It's a beautiful feeling, uplifting his already good mood.</p>
<p>When the doors slide open, he breezes to his door and walks in after punching in the code. Nothing can bring his mood down today, and he'll celebrate this good feeling. Maybe give his favourite call girl a ring, have her come in and help him commemorate his victory over a bunch of misguided, hipster university students who like to pretend money isn't worth all that because they can't get what he has.</p>
<p>He decides to get a drink – his favourite scotch – and makes his way to his liquor stores when a giggle reaches his ears. Did that vapid wife of his leave the television on again?</p>
<p>He checks their room, but finds the large, sleek screen mounted on the wall black as the night sky. Frowning, he walks out and decides to dismiss the sound altogether when he hears another giggle, this time laughing at him for missing the obvious right in front of him.</p>
<p>He looks into the room again, feeling wary. Still nothing. Just a bed made perfectly by the maid, lamps symmetrical on both sides of the pillows, a pristine room overall.</p>
<p>Rolling his eyes at the brief flicker of fear he felt at the thought of a ghost, he turns around and finds a . . . a <em>creature</em>, sitting on the kitchen counter. As his jaw drops, the thing with dark skin and cream, fluffy hair has the audacity to wink and wave at him with a stubby paw.</p>
<p>"I don't know what you are, or how you got in here," he says as the puffball gets up and begins prancing around on the counter in a teasing jig, leaving little footprints on its surface.</p>
<p>He wrinkles his nose at the mud and dirt and gods-know-what-else. Disgusting. His maid must have accidentally let the thing in, since his wife is too scared of pokémon to purchase one and the security in the building is airtight. She's fired the moment he gets this thing out of his house.</p>
<p>"But you don't belong here. Get the fuck out." <em>And stop trying to ruin my good mood. It was a perfect day and I won't have you destroy that.</em></p>
<p>In response the pokémon blows a raspberry in his direction and makes a rude gesture.</p>
<p>He frowns, but he doesn't respond like it acts. Instead, he will calmly call animal control and have them take this thing out of his penthouse. He despises pokémon as much as his wife fears them, and he doesn't want them in his own living space.</p>
<p>He reaches for his cell phone, only to let out a curse and flinch back as his hand grabs not the hard edges of technology but a mushy, half-rotten berry. The creature cackles in delight, and waves a hand – now holding his phone – tauntingly towards his way.</p>
<p>His good mood is rapidly vanishing, like money in the hands of a gambling addict with no luck. The same applies for what little patience and goodwill he had towards this thing with the green horns.</p>
<p>The puffball throws his phone behind its back with too much joy like a bride tossing her bouquet, and he hears a cracking sound. The screen is probably broken. His assistant can have a new one with all the data recovered at the snap of his fingers, but it still annoys him for this thing to wreak havoc on his day like rain on a picnic.</p>
<p>"Now listen you," he begins, rolling his sleeves up. He hates pokémon, absolutely hates them. He doesn't mind getting a little physical to teach this impertinent ball of cotton a lesson in humility and manners.</p>
<p>He inhales, and finds his nostrils – and lungs – suddenly filled with a cloyingly sweet powder that has him hacking and coughing. His eyes tear up as his entire respiratory system abruptly starts burning painfully like he's inhaled a spray of cheap perfume.</p>
<p>Something taps his head. He looks up to see the puffball, grinning arrogantly down at him. With a growl, he lunges and grabs the thing by its neck, and finds some pleasure from the way its eyes bulge. His fingers grip through the thick wool it swings around like a mane of hair, and he wraps and shakes the thing, trying to cut off its air and life. The stupid thing doesn't <em>deserve</em> to live, doesn't deserve to keep its life, not after getting rid of his good mood and having him inhale something that doesn't feel particularly healthy.</p>
<p>The thing looks familiar from somewhere, but he can't place it – or care enough – to recall its name. All he cares about is killing the thing and getting it out of his life.</p>
<p>It opens its mouth in a wordless shriek, and then slumps. He grins, chokes the thing again before letting it loose when he's sure the life's all wrung out of it when the body pops and disappears into thin air.</p>
<p>"What the hell?" he rasps out, because whatever that powder was is starting to make his throat burn. He wants water. And maybe some kind of medical treatment. Whatever that thing did is starting to affect him, because his tears shouldn't be distorting his vision this much.</p>
<p>A familiar giggle draws his eye to the puffball, standing on the counter once more. It looks alive, and as he stares, astonished, it vanishes from his sight, only to appear as a weight on his back.</p>
<p>When he spins around to see it, the puffball giggles and then shoves something hard onto his forehead. He shouts when it breaks skin and tries to knock the thing off of his body, but the woollen creature is already skipping away, heading back to its perch on the counter.</p>
<p>Growling, he grabs whatever the puffball had the nerve to leave on his forehead and pulls – only to scream in pain when the skin of his forehead feels like it is being pulled off. He screams again when he feels something squirming inside of the skin on his head, moving and extending and living. He catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror on the far back, and finds that there is a plant sprouting on his forehead. A <em>plant</em>.</p>
<p><em>No way,</em> he thinks, and stumbles away from the kitchen. He doesn't know what that – that <em>monster</em> in sheep's clothing – did to him, but he needs to get help. He needs a doctor, a specialist, someone to take this thing out of him.</p>
<p>He falls before he can reach the phone, coughing as his legs give out. When he takes his hand away from his mouth there's a splatter of blood.</p>
<p><em>Poison</em>, a not-so-helpful part of his mind that paid attention during the required pokémon school days offer.</p>
<p>Households with pokémon have some kind of antidote or medicine lying around. His house does not.</p>
<p>He struggles to his office, where he knows there is an old fashioned phone on his large oak desk. It's mostly for show, but it does work.</p>
<p>His heart nearly stops at the giggle, so amused and filled with an almost innocent cruelty. The puffball skips up to him, eyes lit with unholy glee. The thing's smile has teeth, he notices. Sharp, sharp teeth.</p>
<p>Finally he remembers where he saw it. A few weeks back he saw the thing on the posters those university students paraded around, claiming that all those 'innocent pokémon would lose their natural habitats'. He's seen this before, looking 'cute' and 'harmless' on a sign waved around in the air.</p>
<p>The CEO tries to lift a hand and bat the thing away, but to his horror only spasms uncontrollably.</p>
<p>Cackling, it leans in and bites. He can't even scream as his life is sucked away and drained from him. The way his lifeblood leaves him is not slowly and fluidly, but instead painfully as the creature rips away his life from his own veins.</p>
<p>The wife walks into the penthouse in the evening after a dinner with other trophy wives spent using words to cruelly bully those less fortunate than them, bracing herself for an onslaught of verbal abuse from her husband. Instead, she finds his dead body on the ground. For some odd reason, there are balls of cotton scattered around the room.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. kirlia, mime. jr</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p>
  <em>elfdans</em>
</p><p> </p><p>No shepherd ever wants to step into the cluster of trees south of the stream. It was dangerous, the elders said. On nights when the fire flickered and their stomachs were filled with dinner and contentment, they told chilling tales of beautiful maidens, eternally youthful but with ancient eyes, leading men away from their homes forever, never to be seen or heard from again.</p><p>"The fairies dance in those trees," one of the storytellers, an old man with a grizzly beard and wrinkles set in his face, told them all in a hushed voice in the night of a cold winter.</p><p>So when one of the mareep decides to run into the very cluster of trees everyone wanted to avoid, Quentin is half-tempted to let the blasted thing be gone forever. There's no way he's going to be risking his own life to get that thing back, it's not worth it.</p><p>Except . . . the mareep <em>is</em> worth it. A mareep brings in wool, and in the case of the ewe that just ran off, more lambs and milk. He's just the fifth son in a small house owned by a widow who can nag the ears off of a boulder with her screeching.</p><p>He can just hear his mother now, harping about how useless he is, losing their family's few valuable possessions. Sighing, he whistles, and his mightyena comes running, tongue sticking out in a silly manner.</p><p>"Hi, look at that," he says. "You let one run off."</p><p>The dark-furred dog lowers its ears, whimpering. "Aw," Quentin says. "You're gonna have to do better, you hear? Now keep an eye on the rest and don't let any run off while I get that sheephead back, got it?"</p><p>The mightyena straightens its ears and wages it tail before running off, renewing its vigorous running around the mareep. It almost seems to terrorize the complacent woolly animals, and he considers calling it back to calm it down before deciding that the effort isn't worth it.</p><p>Taking a deep breath to steel his resolves he jogs towards the cluster of trees. The fog is thick there, a white layer covering the ground. The wisps curl around his ankles like cold, ghostly fingers, and he shivers.</p><p>It's cold, a part of him says stubbornly. That's why I'm shivering. There's nothing here that'll hurt me or anything.</p><p>The forest responds to his thoughts, it seems, because at that moment there is a soft giggle. Quentin whips his head around, trying to find the source of the sound. His blood freezes in his veins when he sees the end of a blue tail.</p><p>He takes a step back, and nearly jumps out of his own skin when a sharp crack rings through the forest. His heart speeding up, Quentin looks down and sees a broken stick.</p><p>He relaxes. Slightly.</p><p>"Just find the mareep," he mutters. He probably didn't see a tail, blue or otherwise. Just a branch, shaking or falling. Or just his overactive imagination deciding to add in horrors to reduce him to a scared little four-year old boy.</p><p>Quentin makes himself march like he imagines a soldier or a brave knight would, seeking out the lost mareep. Stupid thing, running off. Why run into the forest? It's dangerous.</p><p>His feet are cold – the dampness of the mist has sunk through the thin leather of his worn boots, and his toes are beginning to freeze.</p><p>Stupid mareep.</p><p>Quentin searches for what feels like a very long time, getting colder and angrier, until at last, at the base of an old and gnarled tree, he gives up. "It'll come back," he says to himself. "You better come back!" he shouts.</p><p>He turns around and stomps, beginning to make a noisy exit out of these accursed woods.</p><p>Except, these are not the same woods he stepped through. Where once there were trees and grass and mist, there are shadows, thickening and breathing. There are unseen eyes watching him from all around, he can feel it as prickles on his skin.</p><p>And he does not know which path he took to get to where he is now.</p><p>Before he can lose all of his senses to fear, however, a maiden in a simple shift as white as snow and her skin steps forth, eyes alluring and smiling soothingly. He might fear her, thinking of the stories that he has heard, but one slender hand, with a strand of ivy entwined around it, leads his lost mareep, and the relief overshadows any stories told over the fire.</p><p>"Hi," he says breathlessly. Thank the gods.</p><p>But when he tries to grab it by the wool around its neck, it shies away.</p><p>Giggling, the maiden extends her hand towards him. Her eyes are enchanting when he looks into it, and without thinking he reaches out to take it. It is small and slender in his hand. There is no fiery warmth or sticky sweatiness to the texture of her skin like the hands of the girls back home. Rather, it is smooth and waxy, like a leaf, and cool to the touch.</p><p>She begins to lead him, mareep guided by one hand effortlessly and his own in the other. She opens her mouth, and a chant of an arcane tongue bursts out in song. Quentin has never been one to deeply think about the beauty of songs, just knowing how to belt along to a good, cheery tune – especially those with words that make the old ones cluck their tongues and shy maidens blush red – but this song he does not understand strikes him at his heart, makes him want to listen to it for hours without moving.</p><p>The red flowers on both sides of her head bob as she runs in dance-like movements, but do not detach from her green, elf-knotted hair and tumble to the ground. His hand in hers, they run, past the shadows that curl in sentient manners across the woods and towards somewhere special.</p><p>He sees creatures that he has never seen, could never even dream up of in his wildest dreams. A pink-faced child with spindly arms and protruding ribs dance on stubs of legs, twisting its small body and miming different actions. Feathered birds perfumed like flowers in late spring fly, faces hidden by masks. Buds come to life, blinking, enshrouded with leaves and peeking out through the layers as they shudder and shake.</p><p>Flowers burst open in a large circle to mark boundaries, and Quentin is pulled in, his hand firm in hers. As long as he holds her hand, white as milk and softer than any babe's skin, he'll be safe.</p><p>Her feet are bare, and they're as pale as unblemished snow like the rest of her. They leap gracefully as she leads him in a flowing, wondrous dance unlike the jigs, stomping and loud he likes to dance back home. Everything about his home seems coarse in comparison to this slight maiden, who twirls under his arm and leaps effortlessly into the air happily, as if there are wings on her slender back helping her escape the jealous grasp of the ground.</p><p>Other fairies brush past them, and he feels feathers and fur softer than anything he's felt, and scales and light metal he didn't know could exist. Like the maiden, they make sounds he cannot understand. Some chant, and some cry out loud charmingly, and all their voices contribute to a music that fills his ears like wine – the good kind he has only tasted once.</p><p>His main focus, however, is the slim maiden that holds his hand and smiles up at him with those beautiful, alluring red eyes. They dance, in the circle of fairies yet alone in their world for hours and hours. He does not feel tired, and thinks that, if given the chance, he could continue this forever.</p><p>But all good things must end. When one of his fingers brush against the ivy around her fingers like a green ring, he remembers how that hand had been on the head of his lost mareep. And then, why he ran into the forest.</p><p>"It's been fun," he says to her. "But I have to get going now, or my mam – she'll get worried about me, see?"</p><p>The maiden draws back, pale lips parted. Her dainty face crumples, and her red eyes fill with tears.</p><p>"Hi, don't cry now," he begins, because he does like this fairy girl, even if she's, well, a fairy, but she is already loosening her fingers around his and backing away, one bare foot stepping back after another.</p><p>His hand slips from hers – and all of a sudden, the fairies stop their dance, and turn to him. Their eyes are not hostile, not exactly – how can one be hostile to something they consider so far below oneself?</p><p>Quentin tries to reach for his maiden, but cannot find her anywhere. She has disappeared into the fairy path, and left him for the dancers.</p><p>The pink child comes to him, head tipped sideways to the left at an angle far too unnatural.</p><p>Despite himself, he finds his head trying to make the same movements. "Wha – hi, stop!"</p><p>The fairy child bends its arms back, and twists it. Quentin copies it unwillingly, and cries out in pain as a bone breaks.</p><p>The fairies start singing again, and stepping into their whirling dance. Despite the pain in his arm, Quentin begins to dance as well – but this time, unwillingly. All his movements are dictated by the child. Every movement it makes, he must make as well, no matter how much he tries to fight against it.</p><p>"Let me go," he says. "Let me go, <em>please</em>."</p><p>The pink child shakes its hatted head, and he finds his own vision shaken as his head mimics it. This dance, it seems to say with a wink, is forever.</p><p>Quentin does not have forever – he has until he drops dead from exhaustion.</p><p>When he tries to explain it, however, the fairy simply nods. It knows very well the limits of human beings.</p><p>It just does not care. He has no guide – he is alone in the dance of fairies. This is the price for unchaperoned mortals who witness such things, in a world they do not and cannot fully comprehend.</p>
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<a name="section0006"><h2>6. gallade, diancie</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>an1: "Hui, Gallade isn't a fairy". Yes I know but the story of Tam Lin is one from my childhood and Gallade really fits, okay. It's about time I wrote a happy story here anyways.</p><p>an2: Xerneas could have worked for the role of the fairy queen but Diancie fits better IMO.</p><p>an3: written mostly for nostalgia's sake/sheer self-interest (since no one else that I know of is writing something like this if I want to see it I have to write it myself) so may not make as much sense. You have been warned.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p>
  <em>tam lin</em>
</p><p> </p><p>Sinnoh's skies were gray, and the air crisp with midwinter's breath when the diamond princess appeared from between the trees, leaving no footprints as she made her way towards him. The royal fairy was like a snow-woman, said to roam the mountains crowned with ancient ice doggedly searching for her unfaithful love because of the grudge that kept her alive, as she approached him.</p><p>Unlike the snow-woman's victims, Tam Lin, once a kirlia and a fairy, now a gallade and a knight, didn't try to flee. He waited until the princess stopped of her own free will.</p><p>"Greetings," the diamond monarch said, glistening like the treasure she was with the rarest of gems decorating her.</p><p>He bowed deeply, showing full respect and courtesy towards the fairy princess. While a princess and not a queen, she held great favor with the Great Rainbow Stag, and was the immortal god's daughter and representative. "Greetings," he replied.</p><p>Her red eyes, as beautiful and cool as the jewels that adorned her body, swept over the scene that bore evidence of his trainings. "You have grown powerful, for a mortal."</p><p>His time as one of her fairy knights, guarding the rose trees in the bosom of wildness had taught him respect and wariness towards the woods, but the shattered ice and torn ground showed his strength. She spoke true, as all fairies did.</p><p>And in what she didn't say, she also gave truth.</p><p>"But tell me," Diancie said, turning her gaze back to him. The large diamond at the center of her crown glared like the harsh sun, and while her eyes bore no hostility, Tam Lin remained wary. "Can your strength compare to that of ours? To what you held before you left?"</p><p>No longer a fairy, he could speak falsehood.</p><p>But he had no reason to, and she would not believe him if he tried.</p><p>"It cannot, fair lady," he said. Time was not as clear and straightforward in the fair court as it was in the real world, but his memories remained crisp. He recalled the ladies-in-waiting, garbed in trailing dresses as white as the tunics of swanna feathers and flabébé petals he had donned as a fey, how despite their outward frailty they could face any demon from the dark hells and blast them away by channeling the moon's fair force. He could see in his mind's eye the cheerful water sprites, who on land maintained their carefree smiles as they destroyed any predator foolish enough to believe itself capable of preying on the <em>undine</em>.</p><p>Tam Lin remembered them, and he remained vigilant and wary because of it. The human maiden, at his bequest, had pulled him out of the fair world and banished the fey in him through the dawn's star-stone, but even now, saved from that world he knew quite well of the fair folk's darker sides.</p><p>"Do you not miss it?" she whispered. In her dark gray palms, a shining orb sat. He felt his body stiffen at the sight of it, yearn to touch that orb and feel its power course through his veins to empower his blood. "You would be so powerful – so magnificent. The strongest of the fairy knights."</p><p>Humans believed the Rainbow Stag to oppose the Demon Bird – yet it was not that simple. The Seelie and Unseelie Courts simply coexisted in balance, with Life paying tithe to Death. For new life to bloom, the old had to make way. And fairies, the oldest and trickiest of all, avoided the coming wings of death by offering sacrifices.</p><p>"And you would have sent me off to the bird of destruction," Tam Lin countered. The fairy princess fell silent at this, closing her dark, stone-cold mouth, but he continued on. "Handed me over to Yveltal as the tithe of fairy souls, as the covenant between life and death demands of the fair folk. Where I would have been destroyed down to my soul, and then reshaped into a phantom or a demon."</p><p>He remembered the maiden pulling at his fragile, slim hands urgently, embracing him tightly with arms warm and strong. Remembered the stone, glowing like the dawn star at her breast like the morning star he had wished on in his times as a fey, begging the star in the stead of a god with rainbow antlers to let him return to the old days, when he was just a shy little childling who was sensitive to the emotions of others, before the fey had taken him and made him one of their own.</p><p>"Ah," Diancie sighed, and it was one of light regret. Light, because she couldn't feel deep, powerful emotions. Grudges, she could nurse coldly like an enduring diamond, icy and glittering in her heart for a long time, but the fleeting, powerful bursts of passion she couldn't comprehend, or empathize with. She didn't deny his words.</p><p>Instead the princess reached out, hands icy and hard. Sinnoh's air was chilled, but her hands had a coldness beyond just that of temperature. "If only I had replaced your vibrant heart with a stone," she mused lovingly, even if her whispered words struck horror into him. "If only I had replaced your eyes with gems. Then you would never have been shaken by that human child."</p><p>Tam Lin had seen a demon shade with jewelled eyes, an inky member of the Unseelie Court with a wide jagged smile. He had no desire to see the world as that shadow of a soul bound to the Demon Bird did, seeing only the greed and filth of mortals left behind in the dark. He wanted to be able to see the light, the good.</p><p>"My answer remains the same, fair lady," he spoke.</p><p>A dazzling smile graced her lips. "Such good manners," she said approvingly. "'Tis a shame that your choice would lead away from us, Tam Lin – but may your mortal life serve you fine."</p><p>He bowed deeply.</p><p>"Fair thee well."</p><p>Tam Lin stayed thusly until his heroine ran into his arms, tugging at his face with worried, warm hands that had a bright life's blood running through their veins.</p>
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<a name="section0007"><h2>7. ponyta, rapidash</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p>
  <em>unicorn</em>
</p><p> </p><p>The hunters were back again.</p><p>They weren’t the same hunters as before, of course. Not many came back alive, and those that did manage to survive often had learned their lesson through pain and sometimes lost limbs. But like the water in the wells, when some fools left, others soon rushed to fill the empty place as if nothing had been taken.</p><p>Ali was too big now to be hiding behind her mother’s skirts to peer at the foreign men, but she could still look at them from the side, strangers to Ballonlea about to enter the forest maze.</p><p>Fools, Granny would have called them, just like she called every other hunter that wanted to try their luck at catching a Rapidash. One of the oldest in the town next to the Glimmering Tangle, she had seen many fools in her life, all seeking out a chance to get gold by hurting majestic beauty.</p><p>Ali thought the same now, thinking these arrogant hunters foolish. Steel swords and rope, rough hands and loud voices.</p><p>No fairy would go near them. And if they were here, then she couldn’t go to the forest near the fairies either.</p><p>She was about to go to the kitchen to help Granny when she noticed one of the hunters looking at her. He looked maybe a little younger than her father, face not shaven but not completely scraggly. The hunter eyed Ali in a way she didn’t like, and she bristled before heading into the kitchen, away from him.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Maybe one of the residents of Ballonlea had warned them – someone always did, in the way some kindness of the heart could be spared for a fool about to jump off a cliff believing they would sprout wings at the right moment to save them from plunging to their deaths – because the hunters didn’t immediately head off into the forests.</p><p>They stayed at the inn, and paid upfront, and Ali thought a little more kindly of them. Not much, because they were still here and that meant they hadn’t given up, but maybe a little.</p><p>But it was enough for Ali to think that she could go back to her usual routine.</p><p>That night, she snuck out of her room and out of the inn’s back door, towards the forest. The paths had changed again, as they always did, but the mushrooms glowed when she lightly tapped their caps with pink and blue lights, the same shade of color as the hairs that were entwined around her wrist, and Ali knew she was still permitted to walk the forests, as long as she was respectful of it and its residents. The whispers threading the air told her the same, a friendly welcome rather than a warning.</p><p>Her friend met her under the tall tree lit by three large mushrooms, sniffing her with his cream-coloured muzzle.</p><p>“I’m sorry I haven’t come by,” she whispered, stroking him. His mane was something she imagined silk would be like, or maybe the hair of a princess. Soft and strong, and glossily beautiful.</p><p>In a gesture of forgiveness, he leaned close to touch the tip of his horn – bigger than it had been when they first met – on her forehead, where maybe she would have had a horn of her own if she was a Ponyta as well. The pleasant warmth he always washed her with filled her, and she sighed happily.</p><p>The happiness broke with the sound of the snap behind them, however. Alarmed, she turned around while her friend snorted in alarm, and to Ali’s horror she saw the hunters.</p><p>Her friend stepped in front of her, but he whinnied in alarm when they unsheathed their blades – far bigger and sharper than the knives they used in the inn’s kitchen.</p><p>“Run,” she whispered, straining to keep her voice from rising. The invisible voices of the forest agreed with her, murmuring their worry for them, and dislike of the humans that dared breach the forest.</p><p>“If you run,” said the hunter in the middle, too loudly. He was the one that had stared at her the first day, the one that made her uncomfortable. “Then the girl dies.”</p><p>But if the Ponyta didn’t, then he’d be captured, and they would cut off his horn to sell. Ali pushed at her friend’s flank desperately.</p><p>“Run,” she begged.</p><p>He did, but not away. Instead, he ran towards them, loudly whinnying.</p><p>Two of them scrambled out of way. The third, on the far left, didn’t get away in time, and screamed in pain as her friend knocked him down onto his back. His screams soon stopped when hooves hard as diamonds crushed him without mercy.</p><p>Light engulfed the Ponyta, light that grew bigger and bigger, until her friend was far bigger, both in body and in the horn he was so proud of. A majestic creature turned on the bloodied meat that had once been a human to glare at the two remaining hunters. The pink fur of his fetlocks were reddened with blood, and the point of his horn began glowing with a bright light, like a star in the night.</p><p>Ali ran towards him without any hesitation, before they could think to grab her. He waited until she was safe behind him before he swung down his glowing horn.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Before dawn broke, Ali slipped out of the forest so she could go back to her bed, with a new bracelet of hairs around her wrist, the one that wasn’t wearing the old one. This one had three hairs – one pink, one blue, and one stained red.</p>
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